


Constellations

by RottenAdel



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Budding Love, M/M, Spoilers for Endgame, heartpunching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 07:20:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10157306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RottenAdel/pseuds/RottenAdel
Summary: Their king would much rather spend his days where the sun still shines and the stars he can still see.





	

_“You sure about me coming along?”_

Prompto had asked the same question in different variations throughout the day. He would then follow it up with how he was glad to come along, excited, even, with the royal entourage. Noctis could understand why Prompto would be anxious about this; going with your best friend on a roadtrip before his wedding was one thing. Going with the prince of Insomnia to meet his bride to be, the Oracle herself...that was nerve wracking even for Noctis. But it was those wracked nerves that made Noctis even more grateful that Prompto was to come along on the journey. A way to settle his nerves, a means to ground him, keep him from getting too lost in his own head.

Noctis rolled his eyes and elbowed the blond, grinning. “Keep asking, and I’ll leave you behind.”

He wouldn’t. He never would. They both knew that. But Prompto still played it up like he was wounded with one hand over his heart and the other to his forehead, as if to faint. They exchanged jabs before settling onto Noctis’s bed, content with just talking until Ignis and Gladio arrived to clean out his apartment.

Noctis would deny that he was counting the freckles on Prompto’s face as he chattered about all the adventures they’d have out in the world before marrying him off.

 

* * *

 

_“Are you holding up okay?”_

Prompto had asked in hushed tones while the others were away, sidled close to Noctis on the bench inside the third seedy diner they had eaten in that week. It felt as though he had gotten that question a lot back then, but it only made sense. Insomnia Falls, that’s what the headline had said. The king dead and the city destroyed. Noctis hadn’t taken it well, and who would? To be told that your family was gone -- all of their family’s were, save for Gladio’s sister -- and that he was still required to press on as if nothing had happened. Head held high, nobility to spare. W _alk tall, my son._

Noctis wasn’t, but he nodded as he brushed Prompto’s concerns aside, focusing instead on the plate of greens he had been pushing around.

It wasn’t until they got to their shared motel room that Noctis realized the meaning of his question. Standing silently in the doorway while he watched Prompto on the balcony, shoulders shaking, the softest sniffles audible over the chirps of the night. To ask if Noctis was holding up was akin to asking if it was okay for Prompto not to be.

Noctis let him have his moment and simply crawled into bed to try and rest. Neither of them were okay, but neither had the strength to help the other beyond their shared presence in the room.

 

* * *

 

_“We could go to Tenebrae, if you want...”_

Prompto’s voice was thin, quiet, shaking like the rest of him. It was the most anyone had spoken in hours, the four of them separated by a rift brought upon loss and disaster. Altissia gone, Lunafreya dead, Ignis blind...and Noctis, whom was at the core of responsibility no matter how you spun it, was meant to bear the consequences. Yet in spite of the growing chasms between Noctis and the three people that had stood by him through it all, Prompto still seemed insistent on trying to stay close.

No, that wasn’t it. The others were trying, but Prompto was the only one that Noctis had been allowing near. Prompto had _always_ been the one.

With Gladio occupied with Ignis, the two of them were left to sit alone by the fire. Noctis didn’t register right away that Prompto had settled his hand atop his own. A sheepish look that could be almost pensive in the flicker of firelight. Blue eyes that had always glimmered like stars to Noctis, now watering with barely contained emotion.

Noctis thought he looked beautiful when he was about to cry, but unfathomably so when he smiled. He pulled his hand away just enough to lace their fingers together, and Noctis leaned against his shoulders just to allow himself a moment to grieve.

 

* * *

 

_“I’m not who you want right now...”_

Pressed against the wall of the tiny sleeping car they shared, hot breath mingling as Prompto pressed his palms against Noctis’s chest. There was that tremble again, the shake of his voice that he only ever carried around him these days. The Prompto that had been becoming so much more confident as they traveled together, now flushing bright, unable to meet his gaze as he muttered his explanations. He felt the same, but not right now. Not what you want, not like this. But what if it was? What if with everything that had happened, all the emotions running through him, the memory of that last moment he saw _her_ all but _burned_ into his mind, made him want to act before it was too late? No more hesitation, no more tip-toeing and worrying about how he felt for someone--

But what if he was right? What if all this -- the sudden _need_ to touch this man, his _best friend_ \-- was all because he was still hurting? Still mourning from too many losses coming in too fast?

He was right. Damn, he was right. Because as much as he wanted to finally say something about how he felt, it wasn’t the time. Noctis let go of Prompto’s shoulders and instead buried his face against his neck. He took slow breaths to calm himself, fully expecting Prompto to shove him away, admonish him for trying to push his friend into this.

Noctis would have welcomed the reprimand, but instead Prompto wrapped his arms around his shoulders and held him close. Gentle words were whispered into his ear, explanations and promises, things that made Noctis’s heart flutter. Anticipation and the beginnings of something light. Joy? Maybe. Noctis welcomed the embrace just as much, as well as the gentle tug onto the small bunk to continue their embrace more comfortably.

 

* * *

 

_“Do you really mean that, Noct?”_

Noctis replayed the dialogue over in his head, analyzing each flux of Ardyn’s -- no, not Ardyn’s, Prompto’s -- questions. Can we talk about this, what’s gotten into you. He should have known there was something wrong when that man was talking like that, like he was unsure, afraid. Since when was that man unsure of anything? And yet Noctis had played into his tricks so easily, allowing himself to be led around by the nose for who knows how long. All the anger that was supposed to be directed at the man who had taken so much from him had instead been directed at the one person who had never once considered giving up on him or leaving him behind.

He had been tricked, Noctis told himself. But as he ran through the conversation again he imagined Prompto in Ardyn’s stead, and he began to wonder how all of that sounded to _him._

To be told everything was his fault, to have his only friend attack him out of the blue, chase him down like he was a criminal before shoving him off a moving train. All that after they had laid so close the night before, a promise of something brighter in the future once things had calmed.

Noctis buried his face in his knuckles and tried to hold himself together. They needed to keep moving towards their destination. If he stalled even just a moment, the chances that he’d find Prompto alive and well could slip away entirely. Yet there was still part of him that felt that it would have been better if Prompto never wanted to see him again.

 

* * *

 

_“I’m one of them.”_

The words had sent a chill down Noctis’s spine, yet his eyes remained fixed on Prompto. Not at the cuts and bruises on his face from the days of torture he had endured, nor the imprinted barcode on the back of his wrist that Noctis was kicking himself for not noticing years ago. No, he took in those eyes of his, how the light had dimmed from his time in the darkness, yet the glimmer of the faint starlight was still there. Stars still visible, unlike the ones that were once in the night sky above. Noctis watched as a tear slipped down his cheek and it took everything in him to keep from pulling Prompto into his arms as he told him it didn’t _matter_.

None of it did. What he was, where he was from, what they wanted him to be. None of that mattered because he was Prompto, and Prompto was _his_.

Noctis wished he had held him if only to assure him that the words exchanged back then still held truth. Yet he hadn’t, his own uncertainties getting in the way of what he wanted, and the both of them desperately needed. There was only a pat on the shoulder and a friendly word, the vague hope that it’d be enough to convey the million things he felt about the situation. About Prompto. _For Prompto._

As they marched on, Noctis had told himself that after they found the crystal, he would try this again. He’d tell Prompto everything, and maybe then it wouldn’t feel like he was trying to jilt him for the sake of replacing another. The emotions were true, and he wanted him to know that. And with that in mind he pressed on without hesitation, as if the words to be exchanged alone was enough to motivate him to save the world.

 

* * *

 

_“The sun’s coming up.”_

Noctis thought he heard Prompto say as he drifted from the deep slumber of a would-be death and into the land of waking. The light filtered through the dirty windows of the citadel to where he sat, and it was then he realized that he had won. His heart lept in his chest; they had done it. Together they had brought the eternal night to an end and the light had returned. Noctis had been barely able to lift his head, yet he forced himself to stagger through the doors and onto the steps. His friends, those who had seen him off in the night, they were waiting for him. They must have saw the dawn.

They had, and for two the sensation of the sun’s warmth on their skin for the first time in a decade proved to be more moving than they could have imagined. But for one, it signaled the end he had feared.

Noctis nearly stumbled when he saw his companions, battered and weary, crouched at the base around one of their own. Freckled skin marred with injuries, a sickly black that seemed to emanate like smoke from the pale. One starry eye starring up at the light in the sky, the other pierced red. He reached for Noctis, the sweetest of smiles on his face as the tears flowed. You did it, Noct. You saved the world.

The hand was clutched and Noctis begged for him to hold on. Yet just as the chosen one had cleansed the world of the scourge and the daemons with it, so did he cleanse that very part within the one he cherished. It didn’t matter what he was or where he was from, what he was meant to be, yet in the end that fate had caught up with him. A destiny they had hoped would be rewritten if they simply ignored the precursor remained unchanged. The world had not turned to ash as Ardyn had desired, but Noctis’s still somehow had.

 

* * *

 

_“What do you want to do today, Noct?”_

The voice was still so crisp, even after all these years. Noctis smiled at Prompto as they walked along the forest path in hunt of something exciting to do. There were no Magitek troopers to deal with, no Niflheim bases to bust. There wasn’t even the pending doom of the starscourge or his obligations as king. There was just him and Prompto, Gladio and Ignis not far off, enjoying their freedom to roam the countryside as they saw fit. It was true bliss, to be together like that. To exchange the words again and again, to feel Prompto’s warmth as he held his hand, smiling so brightly that it nearly eclipsed the sun. It was all he had wanted, to bask in that glow, and when the night came and the land grew dark around them, he would stare endlessly into those star-littered eyes.

A wonderful life, a wonderful memory. Something that Noctis had never been able to truly get away from, even now.

For the kingdom of Insomnia, things were slowly returning to normal. Yet the king himself had not. They say that he remains behind closed doors, locked away in his study in the company of his pet dog and the occasional visits from his steward and guard. Even for them it was difficult to pry him from the dream and into the reality he had to face. Even if the gods had smiled upon him and spared him his fate, they did not act so kindly towards the one that mattered most.

To others it appeared as though he was living his days in solitude, too broken from his battles to continue in the public light. A kingdom of light, a ruler who resided in the shadows. His closest companions, however, could only see it as a mercy. The smile would return only when lost in the dream; a time where he could make up for all those lost words and broken promises, missed opportunities and hints dropped. It was an illusion, but a welcome one; the only comfort he could seek. And for that, they would allow him to remain asleep as he saw fit.

Their king would much rather spend his days where the sun still shines and the stars he can still see.

**Author's Note:**

> My friend called me an asshole for this. I am pleased. Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
